


18 Again

by GleefullyWicked



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Emma gets turned back into a teenager, F/F, Mary Margaret is pretty chill in this, no magic AU but with a little bit of magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-17
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-03-30 23:22:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3955807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GleefullyWicked/pseuds/GleefullyWicked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding it hard to connect to her son, and with her marriage's ending approaching, Emma Swan finds herself wondering about the road not taken. After an encounter with a shady little man, she finds herself given the opportunity of a do-over in the form of being a teenager again. But is being young again all it's cracked up to be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Here I am, writing an AU based on a Zac Efron movie when I should be updating my Hollstein fic. What has become of me?

_2000_

Those who say that high school was the best time of their life are either dirty liars, or lead very sad lives. Emma Swan knew this for a fact as ancient Mr. Geppetto rambled on excitedly about the different kinds of wood, and how they were all unique and special in their own way. Had she not had a shred of maturity, Emma might have been snickering along with the boys from the football team, who only took the class for an easy grade. Instead, she more closely resembled the bored student teacher, who was unfortunate enough to be Mr. Geppetto's son,  and who had likely heard the same spiel at home countless times.

"But what makes mahogany truly the...how you say, Brad Pitt of all wood, is its durability." Mr. Geppetto continued on in his thick Italian accent, not noticing that all eyes in the room, including his son's, had focused firmly on the clock that would soon signal the end of the second-to-last Friday of the school year. Second-to-last Friday of high school in general, as far as Emma and the rest of the seniors were concerned.

Emma drummed her fingers on her 3-ring binder, fully prepared to book it to the door as soon as the bell rang in t-minus thirty seconds. Any other day, she might have taken her sweet time to leave school and go home to her foster family, but today, she had a date with her smoking hot college girlfriend.

"Mahogany is also renowned for its beauty, and it's much sought-after in the making of high-end furniture." Mr. Geppetto continued, and Emma couldn't believe that half a minute could last so long. The level of boring that her woodshop teacher had reached had apparently caused a rift in the space-time continuum. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't the second time she'd taken the class, but really, it wasn't like she needed some extra science class or something on her transcript to get into community college, and later, the police academy.

Finally, the seconds hand of the clock above Mr. Geppetto's desk crossed the twelve, and the sound of the bells ringing in synchronicity rang through Storybrooke High, followed immediately by sounds that resembled a small stampede.

"Wait, wait! I haven't dismissed you!" Mr. Geppetto's plea went ignored as everyone filed out of his classroom at once, including Emma, who began weaving through the halls to get to her locker before the more well-behaved kids were released from their classes and made the crowd congestion that much worse.

"Emma!" A voice called out just as Emma had gotten the lock off her locker and grabbed her backpack from its hook, already open and ready to have the binder shoved into it. The blonde looked up for a second to see her best friend, the school's resident good girl, making a beeline for her.

Emma  zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder before slamming the locker shut and replacing the lock. "Hey, Mar." She greeted her friend, trying to hide her annoyance at being interrupted in her quest out the door.

"Hey." Mary Margaret replied as she reached Emma's side, and Emma noted the way her friend shifted uncomfortably on her feet. "Um, do you mind coming to the bathroom with me?"  The ever-modest girl looked in both directions after making the request.

Emma sighed, knowing that a few extra minutes wouldn't make much of a difference, and that girl code made it so she simply couldn't refuse. "Yeah, sure." She agreed with a nod, and her friend grabbed her by the arm, pulling her into the nearest girl's room and letting go to dash into the first of the stalls.

"Do you have a pad or a tampon?" Mary Margaret asked as soon as she'd locked the stall door.

Emma thought a moment before taking her backpack off and opening the empty front pocket where she usually kept such things. "No, man. Sorry." She apologized.

"Uggggh." Mary Margaret groaned. "Can you get me one of the cheap ones from the machine?" She asked as a last resort.

Emma turned to the rarely-used pad dispenser on the wall and patted her jean pockets down. "You got a quarter?" She asked her friend when she felt nothing but thighs.

"Yeah." Mary Margaret said, and after a few seconds held a quarter out under the stall, which Emma crouched down to grab, and then returned to the dispenser. "So did you use the last of your tampons or something?" Mary Margaret asked as Emma turned the handle of the machine.

The blonde frowned in confusion. "Huh?" She asked, obtaining the pad and walking it over to place in Mary Margaret's waiting hand.

"You're on your period too, right?" Mary Margaret clarified. "I thought we synced up a few months ago when we ate the pint of chocolate ice cream and watched the first tape of _Titanic_."

Emma thought a moment and counted back days in her head, but quickly shook it off. "Yeah, no. I've been really irregular in the past." She said with a shrug and took off her black-framed glasses, huffing on them a few times and wiping them on her shirt.

"Hey, have you heard from Neal?" Mary Margaret asked suddenly.

The mention of her ex-boyfriend took Emma a little off-guard. "You mean the guy who doesn't want to have a long-distance relationship while he lives in Scotland with his daddy for god knows how long? Yeah, no." If Emma sounded bitter, it was because she was. Rationally, she knew that her relationship with Neal never would have lasted, and that he had to be pretty skeezy to be almost 25 and dating a high school girl. She also knew that she probably wouldn't be dating a certain smart, sexy pre-law student if Neal hadn't left. But it still had been less than two months, and she had loved him once.

"That's too bad." Mary Margaret said with genuine sympathy before flushing the toilet and emerging from the stall, moving to the sink to wash her hands.

"Not really." Emma disagreed bitterly, but her mind was racing now. _Two months._ She thought back to when exactly her last period was, hoping desperately that it was after Neal left. It _had_ to have been after Neal left. She looked at her reflection in the mirror above the sink Mary Margaret was using, seeing that her face appeared to have paled a few shades.

"You okay?" Mary Margaret inquired when she looked up into the mirror before moving to the paper towel dispenser next to Emma.

No, Emma wasn't okay. Emma had come to the realization that her last period was eight weeks prior- two weeks before Neal left. "Can I borrow your cell phone?" She choked out, desperately wishing that her foster parents cared enough to buy her such a useful luxury.

"Yeah, sure." Mary Margaret nodded and pulled the little Nokia from her pocket. "Is everything alright?" She asked as Emma quickly entered her girlfriend's number on the keypad.

"Uh huh." Emma lied as she put the phone to her ear, tapping her foot on the bathroom tile as she counted the amount of times she heard a ring. She somewhat wished that she wouldn't get an answer, as leaving a message would have been much easier at that moment.

"Hello?" Her girlfriend's voice answered the phone with uncertainty in her voice on the fourth ring, probably from seeing an unfamiliar number.

Emma took a deep breath and tried to sound as casual as possible, given what she suspected. "Hey, Regina; it's Emma."

"Hi! I was just about to head to the mall. You still wanted to meet at the food court, right?" Regina sounded like she was in a particularly good mood, especially considering that she'd had a test that day.

"Right. Um..." Emma wasn't particularly sure what to say. Cancelling altogether would likely be the best course of action, but she selfishly needed Regina right then. "Do you think we can meet at 4 instead of 3?"

"Sure." Regina agreed, and paused a moment before asking, "Emma, are you okay?"

Emma rubbed her temple with her free hand. "Yeah, I think so." She lied again. "Well anyway, see you at 4?"

"Yes. See you then." Regina sounded worried. "Bye."

"Bye." Emma ended the call and handed the phone back to an even more concerned-looking Mary Margaret. "Do you mind coming with me to Dark Star?"

The mention of Storybrooke's only pharmacy didn't help Mary Margaret, but she nodded. "I walked to school. Are you driving?"

"I have my car." Emma confirmed, and led the way out of the bathroom and into the now almost empty hall, walking out to her old yellow Bug in the student parking lot as if she were on autopilot.

"Will you please tell me what's going on?" Mary Margaret asked as soon as the two of them were in the car and Emma was putting it into gear.

"My period is late." The blonde confessed in a string of words that were spoken so fast that they practically melded together.

At first Mary Margaret remained calm. "I mean, we're young, right? Like you said, it's normal to have an irregular cycle."

Emma sighed as she pulled out of the school parking lot. "It's really late."

At this, Mary Margaret bit her lip and looked downward, looking as if she didn't know if she should say what she had on her mind. After a moment, she must have decided that it was worth saying. "But haven't you been, you know, dating a girl?" Of all the people in the town, Mary Margaret was the only other person who knew of Emma's relationship with Regina, and while she didn't outwardly think less of her friend, it was still new to her.

Emma stopped her car at a red light and turned her head to meet Mary Margaret's eyes. " _Super_ late."

Mary Margaret's jaw went somewhat slack. "Neal?" She whispered.

"Uh huh." Emma turned her eyes back to the road and drove the rest of the short distance to the pharmacy, parking as close to the door as she could without being in a handicapped space. "Can you distract Mr. Clark for me?"

Mary Margaret shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "You know I don't like being your accomplice." She complained.

"Says the girl that lifted red lingerie from Victoria's Secret last month to wear under her prom dress." Emma called out Mary Margaret's hypocrisy as she unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car.

The brunette gasped and followed Emma to the store's door. "You have no proof."

"Did David notice the security tag?" Emma asked casually and opened the door for Mary Margaret. "I have to go to the bathroom." She announced loud enough for Mr. Clark, the pharmacist to hear, and Mary Margaret reluctantly walked up to the front counter to create a diversion as Emma walked down the correct aisle to casually swipe two pregnancy tests off the shelf without stopping. She slipped the tests into her jacket pocket and went right into the pharmacy's bathroom, tearing the boxes open as soon as she entered.

* * *

 

Emma felt like she might throw up, and it wasn't even from morning sickness. From where she got off the escalator, she could see Regina patiently waiting near the food court, looking perfect as ever in her neatly-pressed, too-mature for a 21-year-old clothes, and without a single wavy black hair out of place. The impending conversation would have been much easier for Emma if she wasn't dating someone who could have been an actual queen in another universe. The nausea certainly didn't subside when Regina noticed her approaching and smiled and waved- she was even prettier when she smiled. Emma wished that the floor would swallow her and she wouldn't have to do what she thought she had to do.

"Hey." The blonde said as soon as she was close enough, and she tried to hold herself together.

"Hey, Swan." Regina replied playfully and took a step closer. "You had me worried on the phone." She seemed to take in Emma's face and knew that something was wrong instantly. She always knew. "What's going on?"

Emma bit her lip and looked down at her scuffed-up Chuck Taylor's,  wishing that those stupid tests had been wrong, but she doubted that that would happen two-for-two. "I don't know if we can see each other anymore." She mumbled, but she knew Regina heard her perfectly.

"What? Why?" Regina asked instantly, stepping even closer to Emma. "Emma, did your foster parents..." Regina looked in both directions, as if spies for her mother were lurking in the shadows of Spencer's. "Did they find out about you and me?"

Emma shook her head. "No, it's nothing like that." She pointed at a bench nearby, and the two young women sat down next to each other. "I just don't think you'll want to be with me after I tell you what I'm about to tell you." The blonde crossed her hands in her lap and finally looked up into Regina's big brown eyes, which were wider than usual.

"What-" Regina paused, looking as if she wondered if she even wanted to know. "What is it?"

Emma hated Neal. Emma hated the ineffective percentage of birth control pills. Emma hated everything that made the mighty Regina Mills look helpless like she did then.

"Look, there's really no easy way to say this." Emma instinctively ran a hand through her hair, glad she'd done away with her ponytail before meeting Regina. "I'm pregnant."

Regina was silent for a good minute, breathing in and out evenly like one would do in stress exercises. "Before or after we met?" She asked quietly after a moment.

"Before." Emma said with total confidence, and without warning, Regina was on her feet.

"Come with me." Regina said to Emma and headed in the direction of the escalators, followed close behind by the blonde after a short moment.

"Where are we going?" Emma asked as they descended to the mall's ground level.

"Unfortunately, everyone seems to know everyone in this town, so I would like to talk in private." Regina led the way out the front doors to her Mercedes Benz and unlocked it with the remote on her keys, gesturing for Emma to get in. Once inside, Regina quickly turned on the air conditioning and avoided looking into Emma's eyes.

"Have you given any thought to what you're going to do?" Regina asked with a false air of calmness, but Emma knew that she was freaking out on the inside.

"Not really." Emma confessed. "But like I said, you are in no way obligated to stay with me. And I know that this was never meant to be a permanent thing ever, what with you wanting to be mayor one day and obviously this rinky-dink town is too backwards to elect someone who they know isn't some all-American hetero, and-"

"Emma." Regina held up one hand to stop her rant, and Emma expected her to agree. "While being mayor would be nice one day, it doesn't change the fact that I am not my mother, and I will not sacrifice what makes me truly happy in exchange for political standing. And I know we really haven't been together long, but you do _truly_ make me happy."

This threw Emma momentarily. Nobody in her entire life had ever given any indication that they wanted her to stick around for any stretch of time. She'd always been a sort of temporary thing. "What-"

"I'm not finished." Regina reached out and took Emma's hand in hers. "I love you." She confessed, and a smile emerged.

It wasn't the first time anyone had said that to Emma. Neal had. A couple sets of foster parents had. But this was the first time those three words had ever made Emma feel like there was true meaning behind them. Like she truly, one-hundred percent felt the same way. "I love you, too."

In an instant, the two of them were leaning across the Mercedes' console, sharing a brief, tender kiss before pulling apart again.

"Whatever you do with the baby is up to you." Regina reminded Emma. "But if you decide to keep it, then I want to be there for you. It'll be my baby, too."

The thought of raising a baby with Regina made Emma smile from ear to ear, not allowing herself to think of the complications that could go along with it. "Alright."

"Alright?" Regina asked.

"Alright, we're having a baby." A second later, the two of them were kissing again, and Emma got the vaguest impression that maybe, just maybe, things would work out just fine in the end.

But then, what eighteen-year-old isn't a bit naive?


	2. You Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Be careful what you say to creepy men in school hallways.

_2015_

Emma did not know why she was awake before 8 AM. It wasn't like she had to be up for work, and she sure as hell wasn't awake because her wife woke her up. She also didn't know why her back felt like it had slept on a spring mattress from the 1980s when Regina had insisted that they get a Tempur-Pedic in their room. Oh, right.

"Emma, I made breakfast!" Mary Margaret shouted from downstairs, and Emma was brought firmly back to reality, and she groaned in self-pity before pushing herself up and throwing the covers off.

"I'll be right down." She shouted at the staircase leading to the first floor of their loft and swung her feet over the side of the bed, jumping to her feet to avoid drawing out the pain. "What the ever-loving hell is that thing made of?" She said to herself as she twisted every which way to get her back into place again, letting out a sigh of relief when she felt the tell-tale pop. "Ohhh, there we go." Not bothering to change out of her so-called pajamas, which were really her underwear and a tanktop, Emma bounded downstairs, darting toward the plate of food waiting for her on the kitchen counter.

"Have you gotten any job offers, yet?" Mary Margaret said over her cup of coffee in the most judgmental tone imaginable, and Emma turned to her, seeing that the facial expression she wore matched the question.

Emma rolled her eyes. "Not since last week, but there's not a whole lot of bail-jumping in the area."  She picked up her plate and went to sit at the table with Mary Margaret. "Look, I really appreciate you letting me stay here with you. If you want, I can start pitching in for rent?"

Mary Margaret shook her head. "No, I'm not worried about that. It's just that I don't think it's good for you to keep yourself locked away. At least you get out of the house when you have jobs."

Emma rolled her eyes at how her friend was more motherly to her than anything else. "I'll have you know that I do get out of the house. In fact, Regina is letting me pick up Henry from school today."

Mary Margaret mockingly gasped. "Oh, she is? Then clearly the hour tops that you'll be out of the apartment will make up for you being a hermit in the week or so since your last job."

Emma frowned. "Okay, two things." She took a bite of scrambled eggs and held up one of her fingers. "Number one: my last job was in Boston, so I was out of the house for like, a solid three days to do it." She took another bite of eggs and put up another finger. "And number two: I'm taking Henry out for ice cream, so I should be gone a solid two hours."

"Impressive." Mary Margaret chucked to herself as she buttered a piece of toast. "Do fourteen-year-old boys even like going to get ice cream with their moms?"

"Henry does." Emma assured her friend, kind of offended that Mary Margaret assumed she was so out of touch. "And besides, the two of us really need to catch up. I feel like I barely see him anymore."

"Gotta love those pesky custody arrangements." Mary Margaret sighed.

"Actually, the official one isn't getting decided until a hearing in a couple of weeks." Emma tried not to show that this affected her strongly, but Mary Margaret always knew.

"And that's the end, then?" She asked, and Emma nodded. "Well...look on the bright side. Your wife might be divorcing you, but maybe you can take advantage of that and do something you couldn't do before?"

"Oh yeah? Like what?" Emma got up from the table to get juice from the fridge, biting her lip when she noticed that there was enough in the container for about a quarter of a glass.

"That's for you to figure out, I guess." Mary Margaret said after a short pause.

Emma scoffed and brought the juice directly to her mouth, finishing off the rest before tossing the carton into the trash. "I don't know. It just kind of seems like 32 is a little late to get a fresh start."

"Be glad you had an original start. You could be perpetually single." Mary Margaret reminded Emma with an immense amount of self-pity, picking up her coffee mug from the table.

"And with a sperm donor catalogue in my bedroom." Emma added pointedly, sitting back down at the table. "What's that about?"

Mary Margaret's cheeks turned bright red as she almost choked on her coffee. "Oh, you found that?" She asked after setting her cup down, and Emma nodded with her eyes wide, indicating that she wanted details. "I'm exploring my options, alright? I'm not getting any younger and I want kids."

"No, I guess I get it." Emma said after a beat. "Just make sure it's what you want to do, okay? Kids are a huge deal, and while you first think about babies, the stuff that comes afterward is the hard stuff."

"I'm a teacher. Believe me, I know."  Mary Margaret reached over to pick up the newspaper, sighing at the front page. "I don't know why I even still subscribe to this. They never report on anything actually newsworthy."

Emma frowned and leaned across the table to get a good look at a picture of a grinning Sheriff Nolan holding a couple of Dalmatian puppies. "I guess David delivered a litter of puppies?" She read the headline.

"That's not news!" Mary Margaret remarked, pushing out her chair and heading for the coat rack.

"For this town, it is." Emma said sympathetically, then looked back at the picture. "Cute picture of David, though. Want me to cut it out for you to add to your collection?" She teased.

"Stop going through my stuff and get some hobbies!" Mary Margaret shouted back at Emma before heading out the door.

* * *

 

For the record, Emma had never once been in favor of sending Henry to a private Catholic school. The hefty tuition bill alone was enough to send the former foster kid in her through a loop, not considering that neither she nor Regina were Catholics. But while Emma had insisted that Storybrooke had as good of public schools as any, and that the classes weren't _that_ crowded, Regina wouldn't budge.

_"He's our son, Emma. Don't you want to make sure he has the very best education?"_ Regina had argued, and how could Emma refuse when she was faced with logic and big brown eyes? It was admittedly something she'd faced numerous times in their 15 years together.

This left Emma standing patiently in the main hall of Blessed Savior, waiting for the last bell to ring. All high schools are alike in that they're high schools, and Emma wanted nothing more than to get out of there as quickly as possible. Though deep down, a part of her sort of envied the kids that went to Henry's school. Their lives, though they wouldn't know it from all the homework, were far easier than they ever would be. They had so many choices and so many things to look forward to.

And her? Emma was almost 33, she had a dead-end job as a bail bondsperson, and her wife was divorcing her because it was apparently quite bothersome to spend 15 years with someone who dwelled on the what could have been. She could have gone to college. She could have become a cop like she'd wanted. She could have been adopted by someone as a kid and not fallen in with a 24-year-old thief that left just as things were getting serious.

So Emma couldn't really blame Regina for finally having enough. Maybe it was better for the both of them.

"Waiting for something?" A voice asked Emma suddenly, causing her to jump.

She turned to see a smiling little man in a suit and a skinny tie casually leaning up against some lockers. The air about him suggested some kind of laid-back English teacher. Or maybe a well-dressed step-dad.

The man put up his hands up in a calming gesture. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

Emma shrugged. "It's alright. And yeah, I'm waiting for my son." She had her visitor's pass in her jacket pocket if this guy turned out to be with the school.

"So young." The man sighed, and Emma felt inclined to tell him off.

"Not that it's any of your business." She instinctively put her hands on her hips. Emma had been dealing with this crap since before Henry was born.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I just," The man paused a moment, thinking of the right way to put it. "I just bet that it certainly didn't make things easy for you."

Emma scoffed and muttered, "Story of my life." She looked down the hall again, hoping that this weird guy would just go away.

"Don't you wish, knowing all that you do now, that you could be young again?" The man asked wistfully.

Emma shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

In that moment, the school bell rang and Emma looked back at where the man once stood, ready to excuse herself and probably report his creepy ass to someone later. She raised an eyebrow when he wasn't there, and she turned around to see if he was walking in another direction, but the only other people in the hallway were the ones steadily filing out of the classrooms.

"Hey, Ma!" Henry appeared from the nearest staircase, not looking quite as excited to see her as Emma had expected.

"What's up, Kid?" Emma asked, patting a hand on her son's back.

"Oh, you know. A Wednesday." Henry shrugged.

"Did your mom tell you I was picking you up today?" Emma asked as they walked out to her car. She tried not to take Henry's general silence as an insult- she knew it was just a teenager thing and she couldn't expect him to stay a talkative little boy forever, but it was a cold reminder of how everything in her life was changing.

Henry nodded. "Yeah, she did." He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and looked down.

Emma cleared her throat, reaching to think of something else to say. "So what's been going on with you? Any new hobbies, or..." Emma shrugged. "Anything?"

"Mom took me horseback riding last weekend?" Henry offered. "And I started reading the Spider-Man comics from the beginning."

"From the 1960s?" Emma asked in disbelief, and Henry nodded. "Impressive, kid."

"I'm not even to Gwen Stacy, yet." Henry walked around to the passenger side door of the Bug, waiting for Emma to unlock it.

"Still an ambitious goal." Emma got into her side and reached over to unlock Henry's door, then waited for him to get in and get buckled. "I don't know about you, but I could really go for an ice cream right about now."

"Yeah, sure." Henry agreed with not quite as much enthusiasm as Emma had anticipated.

She sighed and turned the key in the ignition. "I love this time we get to spend together."

* * *

 

Emma wasn't surprised that Henry didn't perk up when he got his ice cream, but rather used it as an excuse to not talk. The uneasy feeling this gave her caused her rocky road to lose its appeal quickly, but she wouldn't let Henry know that, so she endured the empty calories without even getting enjoyment out of them, all the while thinking about the extra half-mile she would jog on Mary Margaret's treadmill the next morning.

When the time came for her to drive Henry home, Emma felt like a horrible mother for feeling relief. That is, until Henry invited her inside.

"Do you want to see this one comic where Spider-Man calls the Vulture a commie? It's pretty funny." Henry had offered as he got out of the Bug, and while Emma desperately wanted to refuse, she couldn't deny her son quality time after she had been waiting for exactly that.

"Sure, kid." She said, her eyes shifting to the black Mercedes parked in the driveway as she got out of her old beater that she'd spent years refusing to replace.

"Cool." Henry jogged up the pathway to the house Regina's parents had left them when they moved to Spain five years prior. Well, that Regina's dad had left them. "Mom, I'm home! I brought Ma!" Henry announced as soon as he was through the door, and all of Emma's hopes of just sneaking upstairs, seeing the comic, and sneaking back out were shattered. She tried to disguise her wince as a smile when Henry turned back around to face her. "It's on my laptop. I'll be right back." He promised, and bolted up the stairs.

Emma felt as if she'd been left to a hungry wolf. Or rather, wolves, if the plural voices she heard from the living room were any indication. She braced herself before entering said room to find her soon-to-be ex sipping merlot with all three of her former bridesmaids. She couldn't help but wonder if this particular meet-up was intentional.

"Emma! So _good_ to see you." Regina's half-sister Zelena greeted her with the sarcasm laid on thick.

Had she and Regina still been together, Emma might have ignored it. But what good was divorce if you couldn't hit back at your sister-in-law? "That's Emma with an A at the end, Zelena. No Rs." She jabbed at Zelena's accent.

"It appears that you remain just as charming as the day my little sister introduced us."  Zelena gave Emma one of the signature Mills Women smiles that screamed, _I could do away with you and nobody could prove anything._ Regina, however, seemed almost as uncomfortable as Emma.

"Henry wanted to show me a comic book." Emma explained herself, glancing down at her boots, hoping that she didn't track in any dirt on the white carpet. She did not need another reason for Regina to be pissed at her.

"I was just telling Zelena, Kathryn, and Tink about how I'm going to have the backyard landscaped so that I can have a nice place to host outdoor campaign events." Regina explained, swirling her wine around in its glass.

"Oh, you're still doing that?" Emma asked. Regina had been planning on running for mayor the past two years, but she'd assumed that the current situation would have made things difficult.

"You bet she is. She can totally capitalize on the single mother thing." Kathryn Midas-Nolan, Regina's best friend/future campaign manager interjected. Emma had never really had much of a problem with Kathryn, despite the bad blood she had with Mary Margaret over her now ex-husband, David Nolan, but it appeared that Regina's friends all knew whose side they were on.

"Nice campaign tactic." Emma said sarcastically and shifted awkwardly on her feet, wishing that Henry would hurry up with his laptop.

"Would you prefer that I put it off a while longer? Because I spent fifteen years of my life putting things off because of you being noncommittal with regards to everything, and quite frankly, you don't have a say anymore." Regina said this in the same tone she reserved for the courtroom or a particularly bad argument, so Emma knew she'd struck a nerve.

Regina's friend Tink downed the rest of her glass of wine. "I'm...going to get a refill." She excused herself, getting up from the couch and booking it to the kitchen.

"I'll come with you." Kathryn followed immediately after, leaving only Zelena left in the room with Emma and Regina, and by the look on her face, she was expecting quite a show. "Zelena!" Kathryn called back to her, and the redhead sighed, getting up to join the other two.

Emma waited before their audience had cleared the room before she stepped closer to her soon-to-be ex, lowering the volume of her voice in the likely event that Regina's friends were eavesdropping. "No, Regina, I wouldn't prefer that because I don't want to hold you back anymore. Though I'm still not clear on why you married me in the first place if I'm such a huge burden to you."

Regina sighed and put her wine glass down on a coaster on her prized reclaimed barn wood coffee table. "Well if it weren't for Henry, I doubt you would have married me at all." She accused. "But I'm glad that we're on the same page as far each other's lives are concerned. Aside from when Henry is concerned, I'll stay out of your life and you'll stay out of mine."

Emma put her hands in the pockets of her favorite red leather jacket. "Sounds good to me." She agreed just as Henry finally reappeared with his laptop.

"Sorry, Ma I had to remember which one it was in." He said to Emma, then looked to Regina, and back to her. Even if he hadn't heard a word of their conversation, he knew when things had taken a bad turn between his parents. And that was pretty much every time they met, anymore.

"It's cool, Kid." Emma forgave him, though she wondered if he'd left her downstairs on purpose instead of inviting her upstairs, just so that she and his mom could talk. It was the kind of sneaky scheme his ten-year-old self would have pulled in an instant.

Henry set his laptop on an end table and tilted the screen upwards for Emma to see the page in question. "See?" He asked. "Spider-Man called Vulture a Commie!"

Emma nodded. "Well, yeah. It was the Cold War and Communists were the worst things imaginable to the US population so Spider-Man would totally call a super villain one. It's just hard to imagine because Spider-Man doesn't age, and-" Emma's explanation was cut short by the ringing of her cell phone. She groaned and pulled it out of her pocket, seeing on the I.D. that it was her bail bonds agency.

"Work?" Henry asked, and Emma nodded as she pressed the answer button.

"This is Swan." She answered, and listened as the person from the agency explained her next assignment- some white collar guy jumped bail- and requested that she go to the Boston office for further details. "I'm assuming that this is time sensitive?" Emma asked when Henry glanced back at his laptop.

_"We would greatly appreciate it if you could be here at your earliest convenience, Emma."_ The rep said, which Emma knew meant that she would have to leave immediately or they would be pissed.

"Alright." Emma agreed, and tried to ignore the way Regina cocked one eyebrow at her, apparently not the least bit surprised that her short visit with Henry was cut short. "I live a couple hours away in Maine, but I can get there by seven if I leave now." After the person from the bond agency confirmed that this was okay, Emma told them goodbye and ended the call, giving an immediate look of apology to Henry. "Kid, I-"

"It's fine, Ma. Duty calls." While Henry didn't look outwardly devastated as he said this, Emma still felt like she was a royal ass. Especially considering that the idea of getting away from Storybrooke and an angry not-ex for a few days was quite appealing to her.

"I promise to make it up to you, okay?" Emma offered. "How about as soon as it gets above 70 degrees, we go camping."

"Sounds good." Henry agreed with his voice sounding like he wasn't counting on it.

Emma put her hands on Henry's shoulders and the two locked eyes. "I promise I'll be there, okay?" She pulled her son in for a hug and held on a few moments before letting go and heading towards the foyer. "I'll probably be back in a couple days."

"Bye, Ma." Henry called after her, and she turned around.

"Bye, Kid." Emma said back, then looked past him to Regina, who'd been surprisingly quiet considering that this would have been the perfect opportunity to tear Emma down a few pegs. "Goodbye, Regina."

"Don't forget that the hearing is the Friday after the next." Regina reminded her.

"I won't." Emma assured her, thinking that she could never forget the day her marriage was officially set to end. She turned back around and headed for the door, thinking about how she already had a bag packed in the trunk and wouldn't need to go back to Mary Margaret's for anything. She was always prepared to leave if the opportunity came about.

What came as a bit of a surprise was the rain. Emma felt the first drop fall onto her hand the minute she'd stepped outside her former home, and by the time she'd reached her Bug, it was already a full-on downpour.

"Maine." Emma grumbled to herself as she turned the key in the ignition and turned on her windshield wipers before pulling away from Regina's house and driving toward the town line. It only took a few minutes of horrible visibility for Emma to know that this storm was unlike almost any other, which made her hope that she could drive out of it without killing herself.

She made it all the way to the toll bridge when she saw a figure standing in the middle of the road, causing herself to hydroplane when she slammed on the breaks and swerved out of the way. The side of the Bug slammed into the thankfully sturdy guardrail of the bridge, jolting Emma hard against her seatbelt. As soon as the car had stopped, she was out the door, looking around through the rain to find the person she'd seen, praying she hadn't run them over.

After a moment, her eyes caught the figure again, only this time they were standing near the guardrail opposite of the one she'd just crashed into.

"What the hell are you doing out here?!" Emma called to the person as she jogged toward them, the rain seeming to come down harder now as lighting crashed a close distance away. The person turned around just as Emma got close, and she gasped to see the creepy man from Henry's school smiling like the Cheshire cat.

"This is it, Emma!" He shouted over the rain and the thunder.

The use of her first name despite her never giving it gave Emma even more reason to run back to her car then and there.

"This is your second chance!" The man yelled almost manically. "What the hell are you talking about?'" Emma asked just before the man had grabbed her by the arms.

"What you wished for!" He said, and with unbelievable strength for his size, had shifted positions so that Emma's lower back was pressing against the highest rung of the railing.

"Let go of me!" Emma struggled against the man and for a split second, looked behind her into the usually shallow water below the toll bridge, which now swirled as if there were a vortex in it, and it had an ominous purple mist coming up off of it.

"This is what you wanted." The man yelled and shoved Emma backwards, flipping her over the railing and causing her to fall down into the water.

Emma screamed as the vortex began pulling her under no matter how hard she tried struggling against it. She was a strong swimmer and before that night, the water under the toll bridge was never more than a few feet deep. So why couldn't she feel the bottom?

Before the water swallowed her completely, she looked up to the bridge to see that the man was gone.


End file.
